BERLIN – European leaders said Tuesday they believed twin explosions that damaged pipelines built to carry Russian natural gas to Europe were deliberate, with some officials blaming the Kremlin, suggesting the explosions were intended as a threat to the continent .
The damage did not have an immediate impact on Europe’s energy supply. Russia cut the flows earlier this month and European countries had been scrambling to build up stocks and secure alternative energy sources before that.
But the episode is likely to mark the definitive end of the Nord Stream pipeline projects, a more than two-decade effort that deepened Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas, and which many officials now say was a serious mistake strategic
The pair of explosions on Monday caused leaks in the three underwater Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany, causing large plumes of gas bubbles to break the surface of the Baltic Sea.
“These are deliberate actions, not an accident,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters on Tuesday. “The situation is as dire as it gets.”
Frederiksen said the explosions, just off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm, were not “an attack on Denmark” as they took place in international waters. But Danish military leaders on Tuesday sent the Absalon, one of their top-of-the-line frigates, along with other patrol vessels, to monitor the island. Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod was calling other NATO counterparts to discuss the situation, according to a senior European diplomat with knowledge of the talks who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about internal security.
“We still don’t know the details of what happened, but we can clearly see that this is an act of sabotage,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters on Tuesday.
The act “probably marks the next stage in the escalation of this situation in Ukraine,” Morawiecki said. He was speaking at a ceremony to open the new Baltic Pipe undersea gas pipeline that gives Poland and its neighbors access to Norwegian natural gas. The project was intended to reduce dependence on gas that previously came from Russia.
Russia denied responsibility for the damage. The Russian government is “extremely concerned,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
Russian company Gazprom says it will not reopen the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Europe as planned
“The damage that occurred in one day simultaneously to three offshore pipelines of the Nord Stream system is unprecedented,” the operating company, Nord Stream AG, said in a statement. He said he was working with local authorities to assess the extent of the damage, along with the cause.
Five European officials with direct knowledge of the security discussions said there was a widespread assumption that Russia was behind the incident. Only Russia had the motivation, submersible equipment and capability, some of them said, although they cautioned that they still had no direct evidence of Russian involvement.
“Nobody on the European side of the ocean thinks this is anything other than Russian sabotage,” said a senior European environment official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking on the leak. .
One official said it could have been a message to NATO: “We are close.” Another said it could be a threat to other non-Russian energy infrastructure, as many pipelines cross the Baltic Sea, including the one that opened on Tuesday. A third noted that crucial Internet data cables lie at the bottom of the sea, and there has long been concern that Russia has a submersible program that could cut them, causing chaos in communications across the world.
Swedish police opened an investigation into “sabotage,” said a spokesman for the Swedish prosecutor’s office, Karl Jigland. Germany and Denmark were also investigating.
Although no gas was being sent to Europe via pipelines, there appeared to be a significant amount remaining in the pipelines, raising concerns about potential environmental damage from methane, the main component of natural gas and a large contributor to climate change when managed. to reach the atmosphere.
Danish Climate Minister Dan Jorgensen told reporters it could take at least a week to stop the flow of gas on the surface of the Baltic Sea.
Russia allows methane leaks at the risk of the planet
Two of the damaged pipelines are part of Nord Stream 1, which was once a major transmission line for Russian natural gas to Germany, Poland and other European nations. Russia slowed and then halted flows through Nord Stream 1 earlier this year. The Kremlin blamed technical problems. European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, accused the Kremlin of using fossil fuels to “blackmail” countries that support Ukraine.
The third leak is part of the new Nord Stream 2, a project that Germany froze when Russia launched its invasion.
The Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN) recorded two separate explosions in the vicinity of Bornholm on Monday. Automatic monitoring detected the first explosion, which registered the equivalent of a 1.8 earthquake, at 2:03 a.m. A second, larger explosion, which registered the equivalent of a 2.3 earthquake, arrived at 7:04 p.m.
“The location of the second explosion is five to six kilometers from where the Swedish Maritime Administration puts the gas leak,” said Bjorn Lund, director of the Swedish Seismic Network. He noted that the complexity of the geographic area means there is some deviation in any distance estimate.
The SNSN often records explosions in the area when the Swedish navy conducts explosive exercises, Lund said, and consequently has a lot of data on the surrounding area.
“This [comparative data] make us even more confident that these are explosions and not earthquakes or landslides or something more natural,” he said. “What we see now is very similar to what we recorded for these marine explosions.”
The German Research Center for Geosciences confirmed similar findings to The Washington Post, saying it was certain that the seismic disturbances were not caused by a natural earthquake.
Images provided to The Post by Planet Labs, an Earth imaging company, showed methane bubbles appearing on the surface as early as 9 a.m. Monday, after the first recorded explosion.
An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was likely to blame for the new leaks.
“NS-1 ‘gas leak’ is nothing more than a planned terrorist attack by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU,” tweeted the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the US was aware of unverified reports that the leaks could be the result of “an attack or some form of sabotage”.
“If it’s confirmed, it’s clearly not in anyone’s interest,” he told reporters at the State Department. “What is critical is that we work day in and day out, both in the short term and in the long term, to address energy security in Europe and therefore worldwide,” he said.
Blinken said US efforts include increasing liquefied natural gas in Europe, increasing US oil production and tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He insisted that the leaks, whatever the cause, would not have a significant impact on Europe’s “energy resilience”.
A spokesman for the European Commission said that while gas supplies were not at risk, officials were concerned about potential environmental damage.
“This has not yet affected the security of supply,” spokesman Tim McPhie said. “However, deliveries have been zero in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 is not yet authorized to operate. We are also looking at the potential impact of these methane leaks, which is a gas that of course has effects considerable changes on climate change, and we are in contact with member states on the potential impact on maritime navigation”.
The potential environmental impact was difficult to assess, experts said, because the amount of methane actually released into the atmosphere depends on a wide range of variables. Methane is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after being released into the atmosphere. But water is able to absorb at least some of the gas when it is released underwater.
“We don’t know the volume of methane that’s coming out, we don’t know how long it’s going to last, we don’t know the size of the bubbles that are forming as it comes out,” all of that is key. to understand how much methane could be released, said Carolyn Ruppel, chief scientist of the US Geological Survey’s Gas Hydrate Project.
Scientists said the pipeline’s relatively shallow depth (about 75 meters below the water’s surface) was a concern.
“In a shallow situation like this, it’s much more likely that substantial amounts of methane can reach the atmosphere,” Ruppel said.
The operator of Nord Stream has not said how much gas was in the pipelines at the time of the explosions.
Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice president of measurements at the emissions monitoring group GHGSat, said that while information was limited, a “conservative estimate … is that these combined leaks are likely to exceed 500 metric tons per hour in the time of breach.” and would drop over time if upstream flow were stopped.
That would be “an order of magnitude more,” he said, than the largest leak on record in the United States at Aliso Canyon in California between 2015 and 2016, which was about 50 tons per hour at its peak.
Birnbaum reported from Washington and Ilyushina from Riga, Latvia. Kate Brady in Berlin, Beatriz Rios in Brussels and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.
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